New USB hard drive problems - errors present, drive itself works ok

I bought a new USB hard drive and it works fine on another Windows computer. When I first plugged it into my Arch computer, it was visible in thunar, but was somehow "read only" and the access rights could not be changed either in thunar or terminal. Then I updraded to latest version of udev and now it doesn't appear on thunar and my dmesg gives the following results:

Thanks, we are making progress. However, now everything looks fine from the start, but when I tried to create a folder, an error appeared "no such folder" and the drive disappeared from thunar as if unmounted and started making a clicking noise (similar to what was mentioned in another thread here).

Another update: I managed to get the drive corrupted and had to format it in windows, this time to NTFS (I think it was FAT32 before). That worked for a short while, but when I started copying files onto the drive, it crashed again leading to another formatting with windows.

I really can't to hear the results for this. My dad has a Dell Desktop running on Windows Vista which he doesn't want me to get rid of or install Linux on the same HDD (Which is reasonable because it is a 80GB drive). I tried to install Arch x64 on my 750 ExHDD and got Error 15. I am assuming this is the reason. I wish you godspeed in finding the issue. From there I can replace Ubuntu 11.10 on my netbook after fooling around with Arch on the desktop.

After another re-formatting, I tried again to copy stuff on the drive. It failed. This time I copied the error message here:

Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: ntfs_mst_post_read_fixup: magic: 0x43425355 size: 1024 usa_ofs: 1406 usa_count: 65535: Invalid argument
Record 5 has no FILE magic (0x43425355)
Failed to mount '/dev/sdb1': Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.

I looked into the dmraid wiki page and it looks tricky. Does anyone have a solution?

My drive is a generic manufacturer (bought from ebay) usb 2.0 (it says serial ATA on the cover) drive. It did not come with utilities and if there were any on the drive itself, the drive has been formatted a few times already so those are already lost.

I have never been too sure about the USB ports of my computer. There are a few, but I don't know whether they are 2.0 or older (the computer itself is 6 years old desktop). Is there any way of checking?

My drive is a generic manufacturer (bought from ebay) usb 2.0 (it says serial ATA on the cover) drive. It did not come with utilities and if there were any on the drive itself, the drive has been formatted a few times already so those are already lost.

I have never been too sure about the USB ports of my computer. There are a few, but I don't know whether they are 2.0 or older (the computer itself is 6 years old desktop). Is there any way of checking?

I think he was talking to me buddy haha uh my 750Gig is made by Toshiba, it is a 2.0 USB and same with the desktop. (It is an old Dell Optiplex 320) I am about to head out for breakfast so I will relay you further information later on today. Thank you!

Do similar copy operations on a Windows system result in similar errors? Have you tried 'chkdsk /f' on a Windows machine?

Have you checked the manufacturer's site for their disk utilities and then used those tools?

My ExHDD: http://goo.gl/Sx9F8 <Just realized that the Adf.ly link makes me look like a douche so I swapped it out with Goo.gl

For some reason, the Hard Drive is not booting on the Desktop despite the BIOS stating "USB" is a bootable option.Whoops... we had BIOS version 1.1.4, upgraded to 1.1.12 and it booted perfectly fine. The feeling of being ridiculous. I also saw when I downloaded a fresh ISO from Arch that there is now a new bootloader (I was using a CD multiple months old, however installing via network). I tried that in VirtualBox on the Dell and it worked streamlined. Thus, I will snag some DVD's/CD's tomorrow and see if I can't fix this ankle-biter.

I get Error 15: File not found when I attempt to boot into Arch on my Netbook and Error 17 on the Desktop. Hopefully the different bootloader will fix this problem.

That is a grub error and not a drive error. The thing is each bios/manufacturer seems to deal with usb boot differently, some make the usb drive show up before the internal drives, others seem to make it show up after the internal drives and this seems to get grub confused. I usually solve that by using grub's built-in command line to look for the needed stuff and set it up right. I may be completely wrong though

Okay, some reports on the things attempted: The manual mounting only worked (so far) as root, and when I started to check the contents of the drive, it crashed again. I was able to see a few files that were copied onto the drive on windows for testing purposes before the crash. When mounted as root, file operations were not possible from thunar.After crash, the error read as follows:

Error stating file '/media/usb-hd': Input/output error

On the hdparm command, I could not get it to work. Here is the error message:

@raavas: Clicking noise and boot problems, I'd try a different cable, and if it's a 2.5" drive, a Y-cable to give it more power.

@BSOD666: I don't see what your problem has to do with the topic of this thread. Posting it here makes it difficult to follow the discussion and solve raavas' problem. Unless you're sure it's the same problem, it's better to start another thread. In any case, grub error 15 is a very frequent error and a search will probably return the answer.

I'd better explain what I mean by the crash. When I do any kind of file operations (except create and delete a single folder - this works fine), they work fine for a short while. Then the estimated time indicator usually gives longer and longer time estimate after which the drive 'disappears' from the thunar window as if unmounted. If I try to plug it back in, it results in an error. If I plug it back to windows, it requires a re-format.

@stqn: The drive is 2.5" and I am already using an Y-cable. It is ridiculously slow to do anything if only one end of the Y-section is plugged in. The clicking happens after the "crash".

Thanks for the help so far, I will try the dmesg and tail commands shortly and report back.

Have you tried to format the drive in a native linux filesystem, such as ext4? From my experience, anything to do with ntfs on linux is slow and cpu intensive and I would try to avoid using ntfs if at all possible.

On the hdparm issue, try to mount a partition residing on that disk before using hdparm (don't ask me why, I may have dreamed it but I think that sometimes works). You may also be dealing with a usb bridge that needs some quirk that has not been added to the kernel yet, which leads to poor performance and the kind of problems you are experiencing.

One thing I would try to check is the SMART attributes to see if the drive is failing or not, a bad hard disk might also cause what you are experiencing.

In my case, the whole system doesn't hang, just the file operation crashes and everything else stays as normal.

I have thought about formatting into ext4, but that probably won't work on windows? I bought the drive to that I can backup files and use them in multiple systems (including windows, much to my dislike).

So, today's test reports: The drive appears to be a "Super Top", I don't know whether this helps at all (info coming from lsusb). I also hope that I won't discover that it is the worst manufacturer ever...

I did a clean format again on windows (plus a safe eject, which I accidentally failed to do previously - that attempt led to some 'fixing' by ntfs-3g) and plugged the drive into my Arch computer. I mounted with the ntfs-3g -command as instructed above, and all went fine. Some file operations went ok as well until I tried to copy a large-ish folder with many files onto the drive. This copying seemed to go fine (and quick) until the end when it again disappeared from the thunar window and when I try to manually unmount it gives this message:

umount: /media/usb-hd: device is busy.
(In some cases useful info about processes that use
the device is found by lsof(8) or fuser(1))

as well as the "reading directory .: Input/output error"

No clicking noise this time.

I guess I could look into what worked in the thread that thisoldman posted - I don't know whether disabling legacy USB support in my BIOS would do me any good as the system only seems to have one USB 2.0s and four USB 1.1s.

Looking promising! I first formatted (yet again, this time the non-quick option on windows) and disabled swap. The drive is mounted by the automatic mount command on xfce, not in terminal. I copied a large folder with lots of files almost without problems. This time not all files were copied - on my internal hd it says 1162 items 1.0GB, on the portable it says 1153 items 1.0GB. Bizarre. I still don't know whether I can trust this precarious situation as a backup of my files, and my desktop is already making strange noises due old age.

Not quite there yet. Turning the swap off helped enormously, but didn't go all the way. When I tried to copy a folder with 2001 files totalling 2.4GB, it crashed again with an I/O error and corrupted the file system requiring another formatting.

I even got rid of the file count/size mismatch for most folders copied.

I'll try again, this time in smaller chunks. I would still like to have a bit more reliability. Do you have any more tricks up your sleeve?